Indian team one of 5 aiming for Google’s 30$ Million prize

Team Indus, one of the five teams chosen from all around the World, will be competing for Google’s 30$ Million Lunar X Prize first phase. The Google technical team will examine the efforts of Team Indus and four more teams; two from US, one from Netherlands and one from Germany to award an initial amount of 6$ Million. Using the initial prize advance, the teams, by December 2015 should develop technology that can reach the moon, safely land there, release a probe on the lunar surface that can move 500 meters at least and finally send at least two high definition videos from there.

Of the 18 initially listed teams, these five teams are chosen for the next level. Andrew Barton, director of technical operations for the Lunar X Prize said that “I’m confident the 2015 deadline for the Grand Prize is achievable, It’s not going to be easy, space travel is inherently high risk, so any team is going to have to be good at managing that risk, but multiple teams are looking good.”

The program is aimed at making private commercial space exploration viable and there is no thought of any commercial gain from this for us, said Google.